Poem in which two trans boys take their first marital dance in the water

 

To see the ocean through 

the shark’s gills you must 

 

have put yourself in his mouth. 

This is not victim blaming, but instead

 

an admittance of kink. The ocean

is not your home, and to be eaten

 

there fulfills many dark hungers. The way

a gill opens to both succumb

 

and to breathe is so vaginal, isn’t it?

At night, my partner checks my glands

 

to assess my health and my readiness

to inhale water. Finally, I am ready

 

to become what I wasn’t.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the benefits of learning by example

 

I’m always writing about heavy things: headstones, 

fathers, a feather painted with blood. Below the equator 

 

bats are boiling in the night sky. I know this is the product 

of global heat, humans, but all I remember is my father 

 

taking bat after bat from the night sky with a BB gun. 

The first thing I ever learned is that it’s not hard 

 

to kill. He held them together,

dead in his hands and rolling like tiny red plums. 

 

When I fall in love with my partner it’s as fast 

as a downed bird, smooth and in 

                                                    a tail spin. 

 

Our queer bodies are not meant to live

together, in such blood red 

 

harmony. But some sins are more sinful than others. 

Sodom and Grace are all wrapped up 

 

in the backwoods and yes, I will always be loving 

my partner just like this—soft 

 

and dusted in Pennsylvania dirt. As far 

as I walk from my roots, they grow to reach—

 

and that teaches me everything 

I need to know about being good. 

 
 
 
 
 
 

KAYLEB RAE CANDRILLI is author of What Runs Over with YesYes Books. They serve as an assistant poetry editor for BOAAT Press and live in Philadelphia with their partner. You can read more here.